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It probably will be four months before the District has accurate breathalyzer testing, acting Attorney General Irvin B. Nathan said Tuesday as he confronted the most recent turmoil over the city's drunken-driving enforcement.

In the meantime, officers and prosecutors will rely on urine tests in addition to field sobriety checks, Nathan said. The urine tests are much more expensive, costing about $75 each, compared with less than $10 for a breath test.

But the added expense, Nathan said, is needed to bolster confidence in a process that for a year has been battered by problems with accuracy. Last year, the city changed its model of breath analyzer after revelations that nearly 400 people since 2008 had been convicted of drunken driving based on erroneous test results.

How the latest machines bought by the District will be certified has not been determined, Nathan said. But his hope is that oversight would come from outside the D.C. police force, which has controlled the breath-testing program.

"We are committed to pursuing a drunk-driving prosecution policy that has integrity and reliability," Nathan said during a news briefing with Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D).

In deciding to forgo breath tests, Nathan affirmed an order sent Feb. 4 to all officers by Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier to stop using breathalyzers. On Tuesday, Lanier said in an e-mail that there is no specific deadline for having improvements in place.

"The key point is that I want to make sure we get it right," Lanier wrote.

Nathan also said his office expects to refile most of about 50 drunken-driving cases that had been dismissed since January over allegations that a pair of District officers improperly handled a urine sample in a case from March.

Until those allegations are resolved, cases handled by the officers - who accounted for at least one-fourth of drunken-driving arrests made in each of the past two years - have been dropped in court.

Nathan said evidence not connected to the urine tests could revive those cases "in the near future."

The police union formally protested the investigation, calling it retaliatory. The probe was opened in the summer 2010, months after one of the officers sent an internal e-mail last February asking whether there were problems with the breath-testing program.